The Square Enix Issue
Despite the fact that Square Enix's output of the last, well, almost decade, has been at best middling-to-poor...I still can't help but get a bit excited every time they release trailers for their latest games.
Here are there new trailers, although we're not supposed to be able to see them yet - SE have a stupid precedent for showing new trailers in a media blackout, as if they don't want us - the people who (might(probably, let's be honsest)) actually buy their games to actually see the actually games.
It's probably safe to say at this point in time that SE are better at making trailers than they are at making games. I remember the trailer for FFXIII more fondly than I remember actual FFXIII.
I think this is because these days SE design their games as if they were designing trailers. They're probably pretty annoyed about having to put in the bits where people can press buttons and move shit around; they'd rather skip that and spend more time on the bits where cool stuff whooshes around and then explodes.
That's impression that you get from playing recent fair like FFXIII and Kingdom Hearts (2, and any of the pre/sequel/spinoff crap you care to mention). These games are way more fun to look at than they are to play.
If you walk in on someone playing FFXIII with no idea how the game works, you'll be blown away by the amount of stuff going on on the screen. It looks like the most exciting thing ever, until you look what the player is actually doing with their hands. Which is pretty much just hammering the X button. Again and again and again.
For this reason, I highly expect that FF Versus XIII (I don't even know how I'm supposed to write that properly), despite looking great and massive and whooshy and exciting, and being some sort of reality/fantasy crossover which I am all about, will probably end up being more of an interactive tech demo than a proper video game.
And I'll probably buy the bastard anyway, mostly because it LOOKS awesome, and I'll probably play through it largely convinced that it is awesome until I get to the end and realise all I've done for the whole damn thing is wailed on the X button.
But by that point it will too late, Square Enix will have more of my money, and will continue to use it to push out even more pretty-but-utterly-vapid videogames. Which I'll probably then go and fucking buy.
